MINERAL SPRINGS exist in. many parts of the south and east of Asia. The districts richest in mineral waters appear to be the Tenasserim Provinces ; a district around Hazaribagh, stretch ing in almost every direction for about 130 miles, in many places literally teeming with hot springs; the upper part of the Jalandhar Doab, or rather the hills beyond its northern boundary, the Salt Range, and Northern and Western Sind ; next to these is the Konkan, and, though not to be com pared with any of the foregoing, the springs in the peninsula of Gujerat. The known springs are found at every elevation from within high-water mark to a height of 12,000 feet.
The most frequent of all appear to be the hot springs without any very strong mineral impreg nation, which are so abundant in the Tenasserim Provinces, and in the Hazaribagh districts, in some parts of the Himalaya, in the Konkan, also in Sind, where, as in many other places, an im pregnation with carbonate of lime is common. One or two such have been found in Rajputana and the Dekhan.
Sulphurous springs appear to be pretty equally diffused: several in Hazaribagh, some in the Ner badda, some in the Konkan and Gujerat, some in Sind and the Salt Range, many at the base of the Himalaya, and in the upper part of the Jalandhar Doab. The great majority of them are thermal.
The saline springs are chiefly found in Sind and in the higher portion of the Panjab ; they usually contain common salt with some sulphate of soda and small quantities of other salts, when they are not simply brine. Traces of iodine are found near Kangra. Throughout Rajputana and in some parts of the Panjab, the wells are abundantly impregnated with soda. Seine of the springs in Kamaon contain mineral impregnations, but scarcely to an extent to be considered saline. Scarcely any strong saline ones are thermal. The few thermal salines are chiefly calcareous, and one or two There appears to be a general deficiency of chalybeates, and there is no one district in which they have been found more frequently than another, unless in the outer ranges of the Him alaya. Wells in the Neilgherries are said often to
have a trace of iron. Nono of the Indian chaly beates are thermal, and none of those known, except that at the beautiful spot Nagconda, appear to be strong ones. Some of the thermal springs, as the Seeta Kund at Mongbir, the water of which is highly prized, and often carried on long voyages, are probably slightly carbonated.
Dr. Buist, in Trans. Bombay Geogr. Society, collected a large list of thermal springs. In the great majority of instances they lthve only been regarded by the natives of the country as emana tions of the deity, and as objects of worship. Wherever there is a. hot spring, there is pretty sure to be a temple, visited by pilgrims. Many have been used medicinally ; and those which appear to be most resorted to for their healing virtues are the springs at Malacca, also at Sona, near Delili, where considerable buildings have been erected for the convenience of bathers, at Munnikarn, and at the Lukki pass. All of them are thermal, and except Munnikarn are sulphuretted. Natives have Undoubtedly faith in them in certain cases, and they might easily at a small expense be made more extensively useful. Mr. Ludlow in 1826 suggested that the wells at Sona should be made use of for European soldiers. Dr. Murray attempted in 1843-44 to employ the sulphuretted and chalybeate springs in the valley below Landour for the benefit of the invalids at that sanatorium, but the situation of the springs, at the bottom of a hot and confined though picturesque valley, was an obstacle to success. The absence, at most seasons of the year, of a bracing climate, at the generality of the thermal springs in India, diminishes the chance of their ever proving of utility to Europeans. Perhaps the climate of Hazaribagh, which is 1500 feet above the level of the sea, alone offers something of an exception to this remark.